The Berenstain Bears Learn A Lesson, Maybe
by ann.unemori
Summary: Mama tries to clean up the house, and teach the cubs a lesson in economics, but it's not easy. And Papa isn't very helpful either. A less-than-perfect view of the Bear Family.


The Berenstain Bears Learn A Lesson, Maybe

Down in Bear Country the Berenstain Bears live happily, Papa, Mama, Brother, Sister, Baby—oop, her name's supposed to be Honeypot or the like, but why should her name be different from the rest of the family?

Papa carves wood and builds furniture, Mama makes quilts and grows vegetables, Sister, Brother and Baby run around and carry on and they all live in their big hollow tree. They always seem to be learning moral lessons that get immediately forgotten.

Anyway, Mama and Papa love their cubs and want them to have the best of everything. Of course the cubs are only too happy to point out what that is.

The Super-Duper Space Banana Blasters _were_ rather lame, in the end all you could do is bash them together, which Brother did a LOT of times. Problem was, they still didn't break. Lovey-Dovey Dolly's hair all came out after the very first brushing, so you couldn't style it very well. Sister tried drawing on the dolls' heads with markers, then settled for banging them against the Space Bananas.

They made up for this by throwing a fit at the grocery store where a salesbear was selling little rubber pussycats with tongues that came out and squeaked, so of course Papa had to buy them one each. Naturally Brother and Sister squeezed them nonstop all the way home so no one could say anything. They kept the _skweek-eek-eek _up for the better part of a week until they squeezed too hard and ruined them.

Then there was Rainbow Swirly-Swoops, which turned the milk purple, before dissolving into inedible mush. Mama had already thrown out the Honey Wum-Nums and the Exploding Sugar Booms and the cubs refused to touch the Crinkly Crumbles and Crunchy Cringles as they'd already dug out the prizes.

The Super-Duper Sour-Suckers made the cubs pucker so much they could barely talk. Mama made a note to buy a lot more of those.

Needless to say, Sister and Brother Bear want EVERYTHING they see on TV. Whether it is a new cereal or a new candy or a new toy or whatever. They want it and they just HAVE to have it, they HAVE to.  
>Mama Bear thinks she should unplug the TV, but then she would miss her show and Papa Bear would miss his. On the other hand they almost never got to watch their shows anyway because the cubs just HAVE to see something else that's always on at the same time.<br>The cubs keep pestering her to get all the things in the commercials. So one day Mama decides to let them have everything they want, but with one stipulation: They have to eat every bit of the cereal and candy and play with all the toys for a month.  
>The cubs find out the cereal is gross, the candy is too sour, and the toys are lame. But because it was on TV they don't care, and keep demanding more of them.<p>

As the pile of discarded toys keeps growing, Mama Bear has to find a way to convince the cubs that they can't believe everything they see! Needless to say, this can't be done. Papa is a sucker to buy things for the cubs whenever they scream for them, and of course Mama does have a soft spot too. Not only do they buy things for the cubs, they keep noticing all the other wonderful things for sale at the Bear Country Mall, things like new tool kits and cooking pots and exercise things and of course magazines about them and supplies like yarn and nails and flower pots and vacuum cleaner bags. There were just so many things to buy that the house had long since become overrun with storage boxes and bags. But why stop?

And then Mama had a nightmare where everything came alive and started to chase her, and she ran around screaming, "Too Much Stuff! Too Much Stuff!" After she woke up, and everyone beat all the junk back into the closets with baseball bats and broom handles, Mama announced, "We simply can not keep all this junk crap _stuff_! It! All! Goes!"

"No way!" yelled Brother. "I don't wanna!" screamed Sister. "WAAAAHHH!" cried Baby.

"Listen, cubs," started Mama in exasperation, "there are families who have hardly anything, no toys, no other clothes, not much to eat and NO I'M NOT GOING TO SEND THEM YOUR OLD BRUSSELS SPROUTS. Their homes just have boxes to sit on and all their windows are broken. Now look, our house is overflowing with things we don't even use anymore; don't you think it would be nice to share?"

"Welllll….." started Brother, but Sister Bear butted in with, "You can't just decide to take away our toys! That's not fair!"

"I'm not saying you should give away all your toys, just the ones you don't need anymore."

"Hey, I need all my toys! Every last one of them!"

"Yeah, me too!"

"WAHH!"

"Cubs," said Papa, "I think Mama is right. Do you really need every single one of those toys? Just how many toys do you three have, anyway?"

"About 4927588041237."

Mama groaned. "You don't have to give away your favorites, but there are a lot of things that just don't belong here anymore. I mean stuff like headless dolls, busted airplane models, jigsaw puzzles with most of the pieces lost, games nobody remembers how to play anymore, Giggly-Goo that's gone hard because you keep leaving the caps off the cans—you must have 17 sets of Giggly-Goo by now! I can't possibly believe you still want all that! It's time we think of others! Starting this morning we are going to sort all this out!"

Sister gave Brother this "Is she kidding look?" Brother whispered back, "Go with it. If Mama's serious about getting rid of everything, then that gives us room for more toys!"

"I mean it!" snorted Mama. "So let's get started!" She marched into the cubs' room and started tossing toys around, the good ones into one pile and all the broken ones into a much bigger pile. "You decide which ones you want to keep."

"ALL of them!" yelled Sister. "WAAAH!" screamed Baby.

"You're either going to decide, or else _I _will, and them they'll _all _go!" said Mama, still throwing toys.

"Hey! I need that!" said Brother, as Mama tossed an old bird's nest into the throw-away pile.

"It's coming apart!" said Mama. "What do you need broken things for?"

"It's not fair you're just picking on us," insisted Brother. "What about Papa? He's got fourteen fishing rods in the garage, plus 32 other broken ones, and about a million old tool and fishing magazines!"

"Now wait a minute, those are valuable!" said Papa.

"Yeah, and there's those hammers with no handles and jars full of rusty screws and cogs and keys that don't open anything, don't tell me those are important!"

"And the snowblower that you don't use and the hedge shears that got left in the rain and the video camera that got broken and—" added Brother.

"Okay, okay, I get the point!" said Papa. "But don't you just pick on me. Mama, you have to get rid of things too!"

"But wait a minute, I'm not done with them."

"If we have to get rid of our things then you do too!"

"Yeah, just like you said for us!"

"WAHH!"

"Cubs—"

"They're right, Mama," said Papa with an indulgent smile, "You do have more than a few unfinished craft projects, about 35 in fact. Now are you really going to use all that old wrapping paper, or too-short pieces of yarn, or ever finish up all those bolts of cloth? The ones that take up half the bedroom closet? You must have over a hundred quilt patterns by now, most of them still in their packets."

"Yeah, and you keep buying cookbooks that you 'intend to get to use' and never do."

"Okay, okay," sighed Mama, "I'll sort out my things as well."

This took more time than they though, as they had to go through the attic and all the closets and the storage shed and the garage and the little room off the kitchen and of course both toy boxes. Mama did persuade the cubs to put all the broken toys into several large sacks to be left for the trash. (Of course later Brother and Sister snuck out and got the sacks back and hid them behind the shed—no way were they going to part with all that neat stuff!) Then, somehow, they finally sorted out the things they were going to keep and the many many more things they realized they didn't want anymore.

"Now, I'll just call the Salvation Navy and the Old Bears' Home, and—"

"Wait a sec, these things are worth something!" shouted Brother. "I remember paying $19.99 for that Video Triangle Game!"

"Yeah, and my tea set cost over ten bucks!" said Sister.

"And I just know Herbert said he'd give me $25 for my old hip-waders," added Papa. "And let's not forget those stupid Beary Bubbies things you guys spent the whole summer collecting! That's got to be worth something!"

"No, no, no, that's not the idea at all!" cried Mama, "We're supposed to be giving up things, not getting more money out of them!"

"That's a great idea!" said Brother, "We'll have a garage sale! We can sell EVERYTHING!" and Papa agreed wholeheartedly. "Let's get the tags!"

"No! I didn't mean for us to—" but it was too late. All the rest of the family had run off to figure out what they could sell, even Baby was crawling off in a scurry.

Next thing she knew, everything had been set out on tables in the front yard with big signs next to them: HURRY! MUST SELL NOW! BARGAINS GALORE! All the toys, all the old clothes, all the stuff in the garage was piled high with price stickers all over them, and Papa and the cubs were busy running in and out grabbing ever more mounds of things. "Stop that! I want us to help people, not rip them off!" cried Mama, but it was too late. All the neighborhood bears had come over to see this really nice sale with the EVERYTHING MUST GO! WE MEAN IT! signs and the big red arrows pointing at everything. There looked to be no end of wonderful things to buy!

And buy the neighbors did! Within minutes it seemed every bear the family ever knew had come to spend ten, twenty, even almost a hundred dollars on Bear Family items. Poor Mama just kept screaming, "Stop! Please stop! This isn't helping anything!" as everyone kept crowding and pushing to grab more and more and MORE.

Everything sold out, including the boots with holes, the mismatched mittens, the stuffed animals with the stuff missing, the record player that spun counterclockwise, the mystery books with the last pages torn out. Everybody wanted to buy something and of course Brother, Sister and Papa happily took in every cent even as Mama had turned into an angry jumping up and down tantrum on the front yard.

Papa was startled when he saw the cubs selling maps to the Bears' favorite honey spots. "Those places have been a family secret for over a hundred years!" he cried.

"Yeah, but someone offered over a hundred dollars for this!" replied Brother, whereupon Papa dashed inside. He hurried back out in a few minutes with pieces of wallpaper he'd torn off and hurriedly painted with dotted lines and Xs. "Pirate treasure! Get your pirate treasure maps right here!" These sold out almost at once.

When some of the customers began to drift away Papa and the cubs began to panic. Brother ripped the phone off the wall and sold it for $2 while Sister wrapped up paper bundles of garbage to sell for 25¢, or three for a dollar. Mama had to physically restrain Papa from putting a price tag on Baby after about the fifth grandma stopped to say, "I could just take you home!" Even the broken toys sold as Guess Whats?


End file.
